Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
Thirsty.
It’s not so much a thought, more of a command.
Water. Get water.
You can’t blame my primal lizard brain; humans do in fact need water to survive. And I seem to have a severe lack of it, seeing as the blaring in my brain gets steadily louder while I drag myself back to consciousness. And drag I must; along with the hydration alarms, pain has now blossomed from the side of my head. Sharp, pounding pain right above my left ear.
Fortunate that I’m laying on my right side–
Huh. I’m lying down, I can feel it now. My right cheek is pressed into the cold, metallic ground. I feel my chest push down as I take a breath, and I quickly latch onto my breathing, something I can control.
Okay, Okay. I need to take this slow.
If I’m facedown, dehydrated, and in a lot of head pain, I’m probably pretty darn hurt. Almost without thinking, I start to inventory the damage. Toes? Check. Fingers? Check. Whew, I at least seem to be in one piece. Now, where the heck am I?
I cautiously attempt to reach out a bit further with my senses. Water drips from somewhere high above me, pinging softly against the floor.
Water.
Not now brain, we’ll get to it in a minute. The sound doesn’t reverberate much, I must be in an enclosed space. Well, I should probably open my eyes and find out. I’d avoided it up to this point, wanting to avoid angering my extreme headache, but I couldn’t take the mystery anymore. I slowly squint my eyes open and…
Nothing. I see nothing. It’s not just dim, it’s a complete lack of light.
Is this what it’s like to be blind? Am I blind?!
No, that can’t be true. I remember seeing trees, the sky. But something’s off, it’s like I’m remembering from someone else’s perspective. I desperately try to recall friends, places I’ve been, anything, and come up blank. Panic grips my chest suddenly, threatening to steal away the control over my breathing that I had just regained. A frightening question rings through my mind.
Who am I?
I feel hot tears slide down my face, my head screaming in protest as sobs wrack my body, my dry throat aching and sore. I let it all happen, and I feel sleep encroaching as the last of my water dries on the hard ground beneath me.
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For a ship full of supposed doctors, there always seemed to be plenty of sick people to go around. Stratt’s Vat had turned into a disease breeding ground as soon as I had arrived. Not that I wasn’t used to it; seventh graders seemed to constantly be hosts to some mysterious illness, the majority of which I had managed to avoid in my glorified tween babysitting gig. Man, I miss my kids. I didn’t miss the flu though.
I looked up from my current batch of astrophage test subjects with a sigh. Come to think of it, there really were a lot of researchers out ill today. Like, half my team was gone. Slightly inconvenient for me, but it piques my curiosity more than my annoyance. I’ll check in with Dr. Lamai when I finish up here, she’ll probably answer my questions without too much complaint.
The lab aide next to me muttered an expletive under his breath, clutching his thumb. I glance at him curiously. He was one of the recent arrivals. Reigen, if I remember his name right.
“Hand slipped, cut my thumb on this stupid equipment,” he explained.
Now that I see him, he looks… unwell. His face is flushed; he’s definitely feverish. It also looks as if he’s about to fall over, which worries me, due to the fact that we’re working with nuclear bomb levels of energy.
“Take the rest of the day to rest, I’ve got it from here,” I say, wanting to spare him from any more rogue sharp objects. He relents, and shuffles off in search of a band-aid and a bed.
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Waking up is a bit less traumatic this time around. My mouth is still dry, and my head is still hurting, but my thoughts already feel clearer as I take control of my breathing once again. My strange lack of memory still frightens me, but with the evident head injury, I may have an explanation for this bout of amnesia. Hopefully my brain is okay. I apparently lead a whole science team, and I’d like to keep my intelligence. Most of my strange dream – memory? – has already faded, but general impressions still remained.
Ever so slowly, I slide my left arm across the floor, intending to investigate my wound. My hair is sticky, matted with dried blood, but any active bleeding had clearly stopped a while ago. Good. I can’t tell exactly where the blood came from, but that’s a problem for another time.
I catch the dripping sound again, and my brain revs up the water alarms. I carefully roll fully onto my stomach, positioning my arms to push me up. For all intents and purposes, I’m still blind, but it’s relieving to know I directly remember myself with sight. The comfort doesn’t last long when I finally connect the dots on my location.
Wait, am I still on a ship?
There’s no way of knowing when the events of that memory took place, but it’s unnerving to think I’m stranded in a small, dark room in the middle of the ocean. It certainly explains the strange ambient noise. I hadn’t noticed it when I first woke up, but there was definitely a distinct mechanical humming all around me. I feel the subtle vibration through my palms as I get up on all fours.
I let the noise of the water guide me as I gradually inch my way to its source, hand over hand in the impenetrable darkness. A cold drop of water lands squarely on the back of my head, and I immediately twist my head to position myself for future water drops. I wince as my injury protests, but I stop caring as soon as the first drop meets my tongue.
Oh. My. Gosh.
It’s good, it’s so good. I try to keep still and maintain my position, but inevitably the water hits other parts of my face. I readjust to a more comfortable sitting position and lean my head back, relaxing and enjoying the pure bliss that is basic hydration.
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I race through the cramped hallways of the ship as fast as my legs can carry me. I was supposed to meet Stratt up on the flight deck 10 minutes ago, but my lab schedule had other ideas. But hey, I was in the final stretch of training the new lab assistants, and I really just wanted to get it done. It’s not like I wanted to be late to this meeting anyway, the astronaut teams are arriving and I’m pretty pumped to meet them.
“Dr. Ryland Grace, I expected you to arrive 13 minutes ago,” Stratt states, her slight Dutch accent barely noticeable.
“Yeah, yeah, my bad. I wanted to finally finish training my assistants, and I kinda lost track of time. Maybe.”
Stratt shoots me a glare, not deigning to give me a response. Her radio crackles to life, announcing the near arrival of our fated crew. (Well, two crews, technically; Stratt sure likes her redundancy.)
I anxiously scan the horizon for the awaited helicopter, when the radio once again goes off. Something in Mandarin, so I don’t catch any of it. It normally wouldn’t bother me, seeing as Miss Director Eva Stratt speaks Mandarin fluently (along with like 12 other languages), but she quickly starts rapid-firing questions to the man at the other end, concern lacing her voice. She starts to swiftly walk to the front of the ship.
Well, something that would concern Stratt should also probably concern me as well, so I tail after her, still slightly out of breath from my sprint across the PLAN Gansu. I can see the helicopter now, just over the horizon. Dang, it’s fast. Too fast. During just these last few seconds, it’s covered way more distance than it should for it to be at safe landing speeds. Now I could see the outlines of its crew; there was definitely some kind of struggle, as fists were being thrown.
Stratt continues to yell into her radio, having switched to Russian at some point. She was really upset now, the lines around her eyes stretched and distinct, her usually neutral eyebrows now creased with fear. She could not, under any circumstances, lose her crew.
The helicopter’s trajectory was too low. Anyone with eyes could see it. 200 hundred feet away – darn you imperial units – 100 feet away, 50…
Various helicopter crew leaping into open air.
Stratt, running towards the predicted impact, desperate to save humanity’s only hope.
I cover my head with my hands,closing my eyes and bracing myself for impact.
Blinding light still pierces my eyelids, as a blazing warmth envelopes me completely.
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Okay, this is progress! Well…Kinda? I know my name now! Dr. Ryland Grace. I must be pretty cool. And I have a face for this mysterious Stratt, too. And I’m probably still on the ship. I’m betting whatever happened there probably led to me being here. Goody. Though considering the giant explosion I just remembered, maybe things aren’t the best right now.
I decide it’s finally time to figure out this room I’m in. My neck has long since been cramping from collecting my meager water supply, and I’m getting kinda bored just sitting here with absolutely zero visual activity. I take the time to collect some water and attempt to wash off some of the sticky blood in my hair, but I’m not able to do much. What I really need is a nice, warm shower.
Reluctantly, I get back on my hands and knees and start blindly feeling out my surroundings. My hand brushes cool metal, it seems like industrial shelving of some kind. Moving my hands a bit higher, I hear… glass clinking? Well, I am apparently a scientist, this could be some kind of storage closet. I got stuck in a storage closet? Lame.
I reason that if it is indeed a functional room, it must have a light switch somewhere, so I set off in search of one. Rising to my feet unsteadily, I brace myself on the shelving, my weakened legs threatening to buckle from underneath me.
It takes me an embarrassing amount of time to find this darned switch. After I seemingly check every nook and cranny, my hands blindly found a reassuringly switch-shaped object. I confidently throw it on.
Loud, almost animalistic screams immediately rip through the air.
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By the time I had finished up my lab work for the day, I felt ready to hit the next person who happened to speak in my general area. My workspace is unluckily close to the medical bay (Stratt had her safety concerns), and the incessant yelling and screeching from that general area was enough to drive anyone nuts.
Most had grown used to it; the sick lab aide apparently had a history of neurological problems, and we were all just waiting for the medical evacuation helicopter to arrive. It was supposed to ship him out yesterday, but we had the bad news broken to us this morning at precisely 6:30 a.m., which earned a frankly impressive groan from Ilyukhina. I had grown to appreciate her unreserved nature, and it was nice to have someone on the team complain for the rest of us. Not many dared to grumble in front of Dictator Commander Stratt directly. Not without being significantly drunk, anyway.
But having an explanation for the ongoing outburst in the clinic doesn’t make it any easier, and I was on the verge of tearing my hair out. I’ve never been great with loud sounds, and being trapped on this inescapable boat was definitely not helping.
I look over my shoulder at the door to the med bay. No wonder it seemed louder, it is louder. There’s a whole gang of people swarming the door, and they definitely do not look happy. Captain Yao, ever the inspiring leader, is fruitlessly trying to reign in and organize the chaos. I just hope the other astronauts have found some peace and quiet.
I snag Ilyukhina’s arm as she walks past me. She looks remarkably calm despite the clamor.
“What the heck is going on with him? Haven’t they tried, I don’t know, a sedative?” I ask.
“I don’t know! You do science, I do engineering. Your guess better than mine!” She promptly walks off, somehow having a skip in her step.
Now, I’m no medical doctor, but if your illness manages to gather a whole group of people, you’re probably not doing too hot. Though I’m not particularly religious, I find myself saying a prayer in my heart for the young man in that hospital bed. If being healthy on this boat is sucky, I can’t imagine the alternative.
Something about this whole situation makes me feel uneasy, so I quickly grab a granola bar from my (supposedly) secret stash and head back to my room.
Hours later, deep in the night, I am awoken by another, different scream.
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By the time the wailing stopped, I had balled up on the floor again, hands clenched tightly around my ears. I could still feel a faint ringing bouncing through my head. The harsh white light of the plastic-sheathed bulb above me seems to pierce my eyes, making it even harder to think clearly.
Something is seriously wrong.
Duh, Ryland. Not many people scream like that for fun.
I quickly take in the room. As I had suspected, storage shelves, the kind you find in garages, lined two opposite walls. Each shelf held various pieces of equipment, most of which was glassware. The short wall between the shelves held some cleaning supplies, and opposite of that was a very normal looking door.
Normal for a ship, anyway. All gray and plain. Both boring and inconvenient, because I won’t be able to figure out what’s beyond it without opening the dang thing, which I am not going to do. Nope, whatever made that unholy screeching can firmly stay on that side of the barrier.
Hours pass in silence. I resolutely stay in my closet safe haven, but my time here may be coming to a close. My stomach has been rumbling violently, a constant reminder that I probably haven’t eaten for literal days. This profound weakness I have won’t go away until I feed myself.
I hold out for as long as I can. Though I can sense I am a naturally stubborn person, I’m not stupid. I know my condition will deteriorate if I don’t eat, and honestly, it’s been quiet for hours anyway. I’ve seen enough post-apocalyptic movies where a character gets stranded; I may even have a leg up.
I frankly have no idea what’s out there, but I know I don’t want to be caught unarmed. I search the shelves for anything useful, and eventually come up with some kind of scalpel, probably used for taking samples or something.
Whew. Okay. With no more excuses to delay the inevitable, I grip my weapon tight in my hand and carefully edge myself to the innocuous door. Pressing my ear up against its metallic surface, I hear nothing. Profound silence.
Another breath in, and I turn the handle and crack it open, strategically shielding myself with the door. When no proverbial monster immediately comes to eat my brains, I open in wider. Alright, still alive. Good. Now I need to actually look outside.
Steeling myself one last time, I give a strong pull and allow myself to take in the full view.
The scalpel in my hand promptly clatters to the ground as an involuntary sound of fear and disgust escapes my lips.
There, at my feet, is a real, honest-to-goodness, dead body. Blood is caked under his nails, and a quick glance back confirms that blood is on the door too. His eyes sunken, his lips cracked and dry. As terrified and revulsed as I feel, something keeps me from looking away from this poor man’s face. He seems… familiar.
My stomach lurches as it dawns on me.
Of course he’s familiar. It’s Yao.